This invention describes the glucan dikinase enzyme and gene sequence from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Although glucan dikinase enzyme activity has been previously described in higher plants, there was no report describing this enzyme in microorganisms in this case a single-celled green alga. Comparison of the gene sequence of this enzyme from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to that of higher plants also shows that the genes are distantly related with low sequence homology, both at the nucleic acid and at the amino acid level.
Other phosphorylating enzymes, such as the R1 gene from potato, have been cloned as described in WO 94/28146 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,596,928, and the production of modified starch is described in WO2005/002359A2 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,734,340.